


Stay Charming

by meridian_rose (meridianrose)



Category: Black Sails, DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Billy Bones appears briefly, Black Sails season one, Community: intoabar, Crossover, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Happy Ending, Jenks (Black Sails) makes an appearance, Max appears briefly, alternate canon for Black Sails s2 finale, cameo by Mick (and Sara), mentions Treasure Island, side reference to Dawn Allen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 19:06:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14432148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meridianrose/pseuds/meridian_rose
Summary: For the Into A Bar challenge; John Silver walks into a bar and meets Leonard Snart. In which Snart thinks Silver is fictional but gives him a warning about his future anyway, and in which a mutual attraction is hinted at. (Or the one where Silver heeds a mysterious stranger's predictions and avoids getting tortured.)





	Stay Charming

Silver paused at the bar. "Hello."

Snart grinned. He had a rag thrown over one shoulder because somehow he'd got the idea that bartenders should always have a cloth ready to wipe down bartops. In his case, it could be used to strangle someone, in a pinch. His gun was stashed with his coat in a hessian sack beneath the bar but he was able to take of himself even unarmed. "What can I get you?"

Silver sat on an empty chair. "Where's Max?"

"She had to go out for a while," Snart said. "She looks exactly like a- friend is the wrong word. She looks like someone else and my- again, friends isn't quite the right word but let's go with it- needed her to pretend to be that person. It won't take long, and I promised to look after this place in the meantime."

Silver regarded him with suspicion, which Snart approved of. "You better bring her back safely."

"Not a hair on her head will be harmed," Snart said, because that was the sort of ridiculous thing people wanted to hear under circumstances like these. "Now, how about that drink?"

He poured from a jug. It was rum, he thought, or mostly rum, and handed it over. Silver took a sniff before he took a sip.

"So who are you?" Silver asked. "You look a little familiar."

"Leonard Snart. I'm not from around here." Not this time or place, not even close, but between various dimensions, other Earths, clones and other oddities, as well as basic genetic similarities, it wasn't entirely impossible someone resembling Snart had met Silver before. On the other hand Silver might be making conversation or flirting, who knew?

"John Silver."

When Max had agreed to leave with the others, she'd said Silver was coming to meet with her; average height, dark curly hair, very blue eyes. The moment he'd walked into the bar, all bronzed skin and pearly white teeth, Snart had been sure this was him. Now he heard the full name though, he was startled.

"As in Long John Silver?"

Silver shook his head, puzzled. "No. Just John Silver. I've never met anyone else with the same name, let alone that nickname."

Snart took the rag from his shoulder to polish the bartop while he thought more about this. "Historical figures I've met but fictional ones is a new one on me."

"Excuse me? Are you calling me a liar?"

The indignation suggested to Snart that Silver was in fact a skilled and frequent liar. "That's not what I meant."

Silver settled back down. "What did you mean?"

"Book I read once. Skimmed, really," Snart said. "A character was named Long John Silver. He only had the one leg though."

"That sounds unpleasant."

"Hmmm," Snart agreed.

"What was the book about?"

"Pirates," Snart said and as expected, that put Silver on alert again. "Silver had a parrot. Named Flint."

Silver got to his feet. Snart's hand shot out and grabbed his wrist.

"Stay," Snart said with a friendly smile and a less friendly tone of voice. "I promised Max you wouldn't disappear."

"Who are you?"

"I told you, Leonard Snart. I promise you, Mr Silver, Max will be returned to you safe and sound, and if you sit back down I'll keep pouring the drinks without any charge. We're just talking here."

Silver tugged a little but Snart's grip was strong and he weighed up his options rapidly before giving a nod. Snart released him, ready to leap over the bar if needed to grab him, but Silver sat down and finished his drink.

Snart poured another glass of rum. "I didn't mean to spook you," he said. "Maybe someone heard of Flint and wrote the book about him."

"I haven't been with Flint's crew long enough to be written about," Silver pointed out.

"Time is an odd thing," Snart said cryptically. It might be tampering with time, but then Silver was, from Snart's perspective, a fictional character so what the hell. "You know, I'd be careful though. Wouldn't want to lose a leg like Long John."

"No," Silver agreed. He downed the rest of his drink. "That would be unfortunate."

Seven or eight drinks later Silver was rather drunk, definitely flirting, and telling a very involved story that was at least as fictional and twice as entertaining as _Treasure Island_. Snart nodded in the right places, made the occasional quip. Then the team arrived with Max and Silver stopped mid-sentence.

"Where've you been?" he slurred.

"More like when," Mick smirked, earning himself an elbow from Sara.

Max shook her head. "I- I don't remember. Just that it was important. And I got paid." She took a small purse of gold coins from her pocket.

"This is goodbye. Stay charming, Mr Silver." Snart took his hessian sack and left them to it, Mick complaining about speedsters and the time continuum as they made their way back to the Waverider.

*

Silver never forgot that day, even though Max swore she didn't recall anything of her time away. The cropped haired dusky skinned Snart haunted Silver's thoughts, with that smirk he shouldn't have found attractive but did, that piercing gaze, the odd but compelling accent and mode of speech. Snart had impressed himself on Silver's memories as a man he found both pleasing and terrifying.

All that talk about the fictional parrot-owning, one-legged Long John Silver had indeed spooked him. Now and again he'd rub at his thighs, thinking on what Snart had said. Losing a leg would be tragic.

This led Silver to avoid a few situations he might otherwise have thrown himself wholeheartedly into, to submit to Howell's ministrations for a small cut in case it got infected (and given Howell used a knife and some foul smelling ointment, it was only the fear that Snart had somehow either predicted the future or cursed him that Silver allowed Howell to treat him at all), and to take a moment whenever danger seemed imminent to consider how best to avoid physical harm.

So when Silver found himself threatened unless he gave up the names to Vane's right-hand man, Jenks, he remembered Snart's advice: stay charming.

It was his usual mode of operation anyway, or had been. So Silver talked, buying time.

"All right! There'll be no need for violence, I quite assure you. It pains me to pick and choose amongst my shipmates some of whom I'm fond of, some less so, but of course not as much as you can cause me pain. I would mention that torture is a crude method of gaining information and I'm incredibly sensitive to pain. I'm likely to tell you all sorts of nonsense just to make it stop," he said, paraphrasing what he'd told Flint not long after they'd first met. "So if you'll give a moment, I'm sure I can balance my personal feelings against my knowledge of the best members of the crew and give you what you want.

"Get on with it!" Jenks roared.

Silver swallowed. "How would you like them?"

"What?"

"The names. Would you like them written down so you don't forget them?" Silver leant forward, reaching out with one hand as far the shackles would allow. Let me get some ink-"

Silver's hand was slapped away and a restraining hand forced him back into his seat. He wondered if he could do anything with his hands bound as they were but there was just too many men for him to take them all on.

"Just speak you fool!"

He was doing just that, stalling as much as he could. "Alphabetically, or would you prefer-"

"Would you prefer we have this conversation elsewhere?" Jenks gestured.

Silver was lifted from the chair, dragged across the room, forced to lie down on a table. Shit, no, no, no...

"Billy Bones," Silver said desperately. "He's the one you want most of all you know."

Jenks moved to stand near him, an axe held threateningly in one hand. "Billy Bones?"

"I'm not saying he's the most reliable of men, or should I say the most loyal, which actually suits your purposes, but he's competent, and he's huge, strong and good at taking orders," Silver babbled.

"Enough! Billy Bones. That's one. And the rest."

"Well, it may come as a surprise, it did to me," Silver said, "but-"

The door flew open, the crew having taken the keys and freed themselves. There was a brief struggle and then it was over and Jenks was dead. Billy helped Silver sit up on the edge of the table and undid the shackles.

"You all right?" Billy asked.

"Yes." Silver let out a long shuddering sigh. "If you'd been any longer. If I couldn't have stalled for as long as I did…"

Billy put one hand on his shoulder. "It's all right. You're safe now. You did great."

Silver nodded, finally out of words.

*

A few weeks after playing bartender Snart found an excuse to drop in on Silver, though ten years had passed from Silver's perspective.

While the novel _Treasure Island_ had remained the same, the John Silver he'd met was two-legged, comfortably well-off, and he and Max were running a successful business far from Nassau.

"Leonard Snart," Silver said in surprise, pouring him a drink. "You haven’t changed a bit."

"You haven't changed so much either."

Silver nodded, understanding his meaning. "I didn't get a parrot," he said off-hand. "We do have a cat."

"Didn't want to tempt fate?"

"Yes." Silver tipped his head. "Do I still have to stay charming?"

"I think you should always stay charming," Snart said with a flirtatious smile. "But your fate is now in your own hands. Long John Silver is a fiction while you and Max have built a new life here and I have no further warnings to give."

Silver nodded. "Thank you, Mr Snart."

"You're welcome, Mr Silver." Snart drained his glass and held out his hand. Silver shook it. "I don't know if we'll meet again but I rather hope so."

"There'll always be a free drink waiting for you," Silver said and Snart grinned.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr promo post](https://meridianrosewrites.tumblr.com/post/173291566477/meridianrose-stay-charming-1690-words-by)


End file.
